And The Gauze Comes Off

Well, we woke this morning at a pleasant 6:30am. She slept very well last night, even with nurses messing with her every-so-often. We strolled down to the cafeteria with her in the wagon, stayed and ate breakfast. When we came up, Lonnie, (Dr. M's PA) came and said she's ready to take the gauze off! We were excited to get this going and to see what her head looked like.
As she took it off, Tesh would cry now and then cause there was a lot of tape to get off.

Finally! I got to see her head! It looks great. I have to take her looks right now with a grain of salt though, because there is still a lot of swelling, especially in the back of her head. There was lots of goop to clean off. Lonnie, cleaned the incision real quick and then apply bandages to go just over the incision. They had me feel the swelling so I knew what I was feeling. It was gross. I didn't want to feel it, but did because she told me too. LOL.
Tesh seems to be a lot happier now. She's in a smaller cap, to help the bandages stay on nicely. The plan is to see Dr. M back at 2 weeks post op to get the stitches taken out, then she'll be bandage free!

She went down for an x-ray that she thought was torture, and I'll be posting those when we get the copies I asked for. Now we are just waiting on prosthetics to put her helmet on. Then it's homeward bound!!

Homesick

I'm laying on the cot at the hospital, listening to the deep peaceful breathing of sleeping Tesh, watching mindless TV, overhearing someone else's child cry down the hall..... I'm missing my kids.
There's nothing new to report except the fact that my heart is aching for them. It's hard for me to be away from them.

I want to hold them, kiss them, give them consequences when they are bad, and encouragement when they're good. That's what I do.... I'm mommy. Here, I only have one arrow, and the problem is, is my quiver is fuller than this. God has designed me to care for what I have. I know Tesh needs me more right now, and I'm right where I should be, but I can't help but feel underutilized at times when I'm seperated from them. I just can't wait to be home for good.

YAY! Great news!

I finally saw the "Man of the Hour" Dr. Menezes, himself. He said that they can take the gauze off tomorrow, and get her helmet, and go home tomorrow afternoon/evening. (tenatively)

I'm so happy to hear this news. Dr. M asked me if I was ready for that, I answered. "I think so!"
They would've taken her gauze off and put her helmet on today, but it would've been harder to get "prosthetics" to come out today, so tomorrow will work better for them. (assuming cause of the holiday) Dr. M explained that it wouldn't matter today or tomorrow, cause we wouldn't go home till tomorrow anyway. It's going to be so nice to go home tommorrow and continue our journey of healing and getting on with life at home.

Before he could get away (I swear, he leaves so quickly) I was able to thank him and steal a picture of him. I handed sleeping Teshura to him, and of course, she woke very alarmed that a strange old man was holding her, but we got a decent picture anyway. :) 

Day 4 Morning

Tesh is doing wonderful! She slept/stretched 10 hrs. last night.(mind you, she's been sleeping 12 hrs. at night since 3 mos. old, making it natural to go back to that routine) She was sleeping with her head to one side, so that eye is a little more swollen but I expect it to go down as the day goes on. She's eating good, filling her diapers good. I'm anxiously awaiting to see Dr. M or his PA, Lonnie, to tell us what they are thinking. I expect one of them some time today.

She's been laughing this morning. It's been so nice to see her normal antics of getting our attention. She's been grabbing at everything, trying to stretch to the point of falling over to get what she wants. That's my old Tesh.

I'll update again when we here from the neurosurgeon, and hopefully we hear of a discharge around the corner. :) So relieved we are passed the worst.

Day 3 continued

Tesh is making much progress. She's eating a little more normal, but not sleeping normally quite yet. Her swelling has improved so much over the day. Her cute hat is even falling off. Oh, by the way, if some of you were wondering, ... that is not blood on her hat. It's a brown dog that someone drew. Some of you thought it was blood, and no... it's not. I think I would've had a heart attack if it was. I WAS able to give her a "wet cloth" bath today, so now she's nice and clean..... as much as she can be anyway.

She hasn't had morphine all day long! YAY!!! We got close once, but then Tylenol came to the rescue. We have been giving Tylenol around the clock, but this particular moment, it was coming to the end of one dose, so we were waiting to give another. But she made it today with no morphine.

She has been getting stronger and stronger. She rolled over in her crib tonight. And for the first time, went from laying down to almost sitting herself up. She has not gotten close EVER! So it was interesting that she, all of the sudden, got herself up onto one arm, but couldn't go the rest of the way. She sits up beautifully though (with her boppy around her, just in case :l) We aren't sure yet when Dr. M will see fit about us going home in a couple days, but hopefully we'll see him tomorrow and know what he's thinking.

It's amazing what even a few hours is doing with her recovery. I'm grateful to God that He made these little ones such healers. A neurosurgeon once said that babies are "healing machines" :) Tesh is proving this statement very well.

I can't wait to see her head and what it looks like. But I'll have to be patient for that. Some more cousins dropped by to see her, and more family. We had a wonderful time out in the wagon today again. She is now sleeping and I hope to get some sleep along with her. We'll see what tonight does with her progress.

Day 3

Tesh slept very nicely, most the night. She ate 7pm last night and slept till 4am. I don't want to get my hopes up for the rest of the days here, but that does give me some hope for sleep at night. She ate a full bottle this morning, and is now eating again. Her disposition is happy, for the most part, like yesterday. Hopefully we'll have less or no episodes today. She has not had to have morphine since early last night. (around 5?) So we are pleased with her pain progress as of this morning, being able to sleep like that through the night.

As far as her swelling goes... her other eye (right) started swelling in the middle of the night. It did not swell shut, which is good, but it's pretty swollen, which was to be expected. We noticed this at 4 am. Then at 7am she woke again, and then we noticed that her left eye, (the one that's swollen shut) now can peek through. That, to me, is a sign that the swelling is starting to slowly recede. She's been given certain doses of steriods, since surgery, to help with the swelling of the brain. Her hat is starting to get loose, which is another sign that her head's swelling is going down too. She's not had one fever, and she's looking beautiful in all other aspects.

4 am- day 3

7 am- day 3

More Visitors:)

We were so happy that Abby and her parents, Tami and David, were able to visit us. We were able to meet their son Conner. As they were visiting us, lo and behold, I see my son come barrelling through the door. I was so excited to see my babies, and to let Tami and David meet them too. Conner and Isaiah hit it off. They were so cute. And we got more pictures of the girls together.

Being in the regular Peds. unit, we had the freedom to take Tesh out on a little stroll around the WHOLE hospital, even the playground outside. So we went out there with all the kiddos and let them run around.

Tesh is still doing well. She has these episodes at times where she's fine one minute and then, all of the sudden, she's screaming and crying as if she's in pain. During those episodes I resolve to giving her morphine, so hopefully they don't happen much more. It's so hard having your baby crying like that and not able to do much about it, but drug them up. I've been told that tommorrow should be better as far as those episodes are concerned and I'm hoping so. She's eating still, but her feedings are weird and all over the place. I'm trying to regulate them somehow, but it's hard to do that sometimes. She's very touchy while she sleeps, everyone has to be so quiet as to not wake her. But with all this said, she is recovering beautifully, and I hope to get better sleep tonight. See you all tomorrow.